John Lubbock

When we have done our best, we should wait the result in peace.

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is wanting.

If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure to follow.

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.

I cannot, however, but think that the world would be better and brighter if our teachers would dwell on the Duty of Happiness as well as the Happiness of Duty; for we ought to be as cheerful as we can, if only because to be happy ourselves is a most effectual contribution to the happiness of others.

All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.

We profit little by books we do not enjoy.

We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.

The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.

Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.